Each gun can produce an amazing amount of snow in good conditions (5% to 20% humidity and 10° to 20° F), much faster than Mother Nature. A compressed air gun can convert about 70 gallons per minute (gpm) into snow while a fan gun can convert up to 200 gpm in those conditions. (Consider that a garden hose puts out about 3 to 5 gpm.) So, in ideal conditions, each resort’s system can convert about 5,000 to 6,000 gallons of water per minute into snow! That’s a good sized stream flow that could fill a backyard pool in about 5 minutes! If a gun is left unmoved in those conditions, it can make several feet in front of it in a few hours, sometimes burying itself.

We can’t put 5,000 gallons per minute worth of snow on just one run at a time due to the limitations of pipe sizes and number of hydrants, so instead, we make snow on several runs at one time and might put an average of one foot of snow down on each. In normal snowmaking conditions we can open a run in about 48 hours of snowmaking over bare ground. At the start of the season, we typically open several runs and lifts after a couple of days and nights of snowmaking, and open still more soon after that.

Snowmaking Quality Controls

Man-made snow is usually made very dense, having about 35% water content as compared to natural snow that usually has only about 5% to 15% water volume. Early in the season it’s made wetter to provide a solid base that prevents skiers and boarders from scraping it off to the bare ground below. But one of the biggest mistakes is to allow a gun to run too wet, which makes slush instead of snow, which then freezes into ice – highly undesirable from a skier’s or snowboarder’s standpoint.

The consistency of the snow is controlled by adjusting the amount of water that is allowed to mix with the compressed air or the fan gun air stream. Big Bear Mountain Resort snowmakers are very conscious of snow quality. Once a base of 1 to 2 feet is put down, lighter snow is made to make the best possible conditions. We can even make extremely dry, powdery snow, but that is less efficient in terms of the energy outlay.